In 1882, German scientist Robert Koch (kohk) announced in Berlin that he had discovered the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.

In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill granting future independence to the Philippines.

In 1944, in occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that had killed 32 German soldiers.

In 1958, rock-and-roll singer Elvis Presley was inducted into the Army in Memphis, Tenn.

In 1976, the president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, was deposed by her country's military.

In 1980, one of El Salvador's most respected Roman Catholic Church leaders, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was shot to death by a sniper as he celebrated Mass in San Salvador.

In 1988, former national security aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter and businessmen Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair. (North and Poindexter were convicted, but had their verdicts thrown out; Secord and Hakim received probation after each pleaded guilty to a single count under a plea bargain.)

In 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude oil.

In 1993, Ezer Weizman was elected Israel's seventh president.

In 1998, two students, ages 13 and 11, opened fire outside Jonesboro Westside Middle School in Arkansas, killing four classmates and a teacher. (Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden were imprisoned by Arkansas until age 18, then by federal authorities until age 21. However, Johnson has since been returned to prison on unrelated charges.)

Ten years ago: Iraqi state television showed two men said to have been the U.S. crew of an Apache helicopter forced down during heavy fighting in central Iraq. (Chief Warrant Officer David S. Williams and Chief Warrant Officer Ronald D. Young Jr. spent three weeks in captivity before they were released along with five other POWs.)

Five years ago: President George W. Bush pledged to ensure "an outcome that will merit the sacrifice" of those who have died in Iraq, offering both sympathy and resolve as the U.S. death toll in the five-year war hit 4,000. The FBI said authorities had recovered the remains of two U.S. contractors, Ronald Withrow and John Roy Young, who were kidnapped in Iraq more than a year earlier. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with perjury, misconduct and obstruction of justice. (Before his trial was to begin, the second-term Democrat pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and no contest to a separate charge of assault; he stepped down in September 2008 and served 99 days in jail.) Actor Richard Widmark died in Roxbury, Conn., at age 93.

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One year ago: Rick Santorum won the Louisiana Republican presidential primary, beating front-runner Mitt Romney in yet another conservative Southern state. Nine people, including a woman celebrating her 26th birthday and seven children at a family slumber party, died when fire tore through a two-story home in Charleston, W.Va. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, with a long history of cardiovascular problems, underwent a heart transplant at a Virginia hospital.

Thought for Today: "Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will — his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals." — Albert Schweitzer, German-born missionary and Nobel laureate (1875-1965).